These are some pretty heady times for primary education. The Obama administration rolled out its “Race to the Top” program to improve primary education, while, along with Congress, he virtually terminated a promising voucher program in Washington, D.C. The citizens of Arizona voted to keep the “First Things First” program. The state Legislature has outlawed the controversial “ethnic studies” program in the Tucson Unified School District, to which some teachers have responded with a lawsuit.
As I look at the battles, I am saddened to see that many of the participants do not simply disagree on policy; they seem to live in different worlds. In one world, “ethnic studies” promotes the inclusion of Latino students while increasing their academic success, while in the other, Latino students are cut away from the rest of the students and taught separatism and anti-Americanism. In one world, “First Things First” is a valuable preparation for kindergarten and beyond, while in the other, it is a way to warehouse children of middle-class moms who prefer to go to yoga class at the expense of the economically disadvantaged.
No progress toward some kind of resolution can be made without some common ground.
I decided, therefore, to avoid the fracas and try to gather some inside information from someone in the field. In these days of networking, I decided to check my address book and found a Democrat friend of nearly 30 years who runs an “excelling” charter school in Tucson. His name is Gurumeet Khalsa, and he is a director of the Khalsa Montessori School. I’d like to reiterate that I’m presenting one educator’s ideas, not arguing for or against charter schools here.
Mr. Khalsa describes himself as an “education radical,” and much of his thinking is indeed outside of the traditional box.
The Montessori method itself, as he described it to me, is a departure from the traditional methods which “came out of the industrial age of the 1800s when it was convenient” for everybody to do the same thing at the same time “for political reasons and for reasons of scale.” The Montessori method focuses on the individual child, who progresses at his own rate with his own study plan. The teaching “follows the child.”
Mr. Khalsa is not a big fan of standardized testing, including AIMS. “Good test results don’t mean that (students) are getting educated. It means that they are able to regurgitate facts and take the silly little bubble tests. … (Tests) don’t judge character; they don’t judge artistic values; they don’t judge critical thinking. It’s quite a poor test they give the kids.”
I asked if there could be any valid measurement devices for kids or schools; he replied that parents really must be involved with the school. He put the issue in perspective this way: “Everybody wants insurance in our society. Everybody wants Social Security. … Everybody wants to be taken care of. Nobody wants to have any faults, and that’s what we’re stuck with: no risk.” He added that touring professionals would be helpful in rating schools, “but they would have their own biases about what they think a school should look like.” He said that parental participation is very high in his school, and the school encourages it. Some parents actually withdraw their children from the school because they ask them to participate too much.
Mr. Khalsa is big on school choice. “We have hundreds of millions of people in our country, and I don’t think that they are all going to go in one direction. I think sometimes that the people who really squawk about (school choice) perhaps have a monetary stake in it, and they don’t want to see parents have a choice. I think it’s important that families have a choice in what they want to do.”
I disagree with my friend on many of his points, but I was a bit surprised at some of common ground we shared. Some of his perspectives were new to me. We really should openly discuss ideas more before we draw the battle lines in the war for education.
At one point, I asked Gurumeet, “So how’s your football program coming?” We both had a laugh.
This article appears in Nov 25 – Dec 1, 2010.
One story that I haven’t heard and would like to have covered is the TUSD graduation requirements adopted this year after an AZ Dept. of Education policy published in July 2010. A memo sent to TUSD “exceptional education” staff (http://www.tusd1.org/contents/depart/exced…) outlines new graduation requirements for students in special education. This led to many confused teachers and school staff to tell parents that their children will be forced to graduate earlier than expected. Students are then left without federally mandated transition services helping them either get jobs or move on to post-secondary education. Federal (IDEA 2004) and Arizona state law state that students receiving special education services are entitled to continue in school until they are 22, unless they receive a regular diploma. AZ state law mandates that all students receiving a regular diploma must take specific core classes to graduate, but that up to 1 core class substitution in each subject area and 4 total course substitutions may be made. Rather than complying to federal and state law, TUSD is pushing students who are unprepared to work or pursue further education out of High Schools. Many parents who were told their children had to complete core courses before receiving work training are now being told that thier children will not receive training after this year. Special education graduation requirements should be made on an individualized basis, according to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Our district prefers to neglect and reject individuals with disabilities as an easy method to decrease their budget. Shame on them for balancing their budgets on the backs of children and young adults in their so-called “exceptional education” program. In the midst of cuts to AHCCCS and the Division of Developmental Disabilities, this additional blow to individuals with developmental disabilities shows just how much beauracrats and lawmakers think of this at-risk population.
“Good test results don’t mean that (students) are getting educated. It means that they are able to regurgitate facts and take the silly little bubble tests. … (Tests) don’t judge character; they don’t judge artistic values; they don’t judge critical thinking. It’s quite a poor test they give the kids.”
Two comments: The AIMS reading and writing tests require students to demonstrate _skills_, not regurgitate facts. The writing test requires students to support a clear idea with insight, organize thoughts in a way that helps reader, use word choice that enriches and accentuates the ideas, use a voice appropriate to the audience and one that will engage the reader, show mastery of standard writing conventions, e.g., correct use of commas. The reading test requires students to interpret contexts, make inferences, decipher figurative language, evaluate level of support, judge point of view, determine the purpose, identify rhetorical devices used, etc. These are real skills we all want our children to develop in school, and people who have these skills are the people we call “smart.” Therefore, the AIMS standardized test is much different than what Mr. Khalsa pictured it to be.
Second, “(Tests) don’t judge character; they don’t judge artistic values; they don’t judge critical thinking. It’s quite a poor test they give the kids.” Most people don’t want school teachers to be judging their kid’s character or artistic values, they want schools to teach their kids real, useful, concrete skills. “Character” is the family’s domain, not the schools, and “artistic values” is too nebulous to even discuss in the context of primary or high school education.
No, everybody I know wants students to develop real, discreet, measurable skills in reading, writing and arithmetic. The AIMS test is a useful tool for everybody involved because it focuses instruction on specific performance objectives, it focuses students’ attention on developing specific, discreet skills, and it gives parents a tool to their child’s progress and the effectiveness of the teacher (s).
Posted by Mr. Keuter
7th and 8th grade English Teacher
Magee Middle School